The planetary carrier can also be referred to as a cage that, in particular, can be designed as a differential cage. The outer bearing ring can also be referred to as the outer bearing shell. The bearing inner ring can also be referred to as the bearing inner shell.
Different planetary gears are already known from the prior art, for example from EP 0156067.
In principle, differential gears for motor vehicles are known from DE 10156890 C1. A differential gear is disclosed for a motor vehicle with a differential housing having a drive sprocket supported in a housing wall, in which a differential bolt is arranged with at least a rotatably mounted differential pinion that engages with a drive gear of a drive shaft mounted in the differential housing. The drive shaft is supported by at least a first bearing in the housing wall of the differential gear and/or the differential housing by means of at least one second bearing for the drive shaft, while the drive shaft has a common bearing bush for the first bearing serving as a shaft bearing of the drive shaft and the housing bearing of the differential housing.
A differential arrangement engaging with bevel gears is also known from U.S. Pat. No. 7,775,928.
Furthermore, a gear arrangement that engages with planetary wheels is known from DE 10 2009 017 397 A1. The gear arrangement introduced there relates to a differential gear with a drive-side wheel member, a first drive wheel that is rotatably fixed to a first driven axle, while a second drive wheel is rotatably fixed to a second driven axle, whereby between the said first drive wheel and the said second drive wheel, a gear assembly is provided for transmitting torque from the drive-side wheel member to the first drive wheel and second drive wheel. The first drive wheel member in this case has the form of a first drive wheel with a bulge that is radially spaced from the first drive axle. The second drive member furthermore has the form of a second drive wheel extending radially outwards from the second drive axle. Further, the bulge extends farther away from the second drive wheel. The gear assembly is disposed in a space formed by the protrusion of the first drive wheel and the opposite region of the space formed by the second drive wheel.
Such planetary gears, which are designed as differential gears, can be formed as spur wheel differential gears as they are known, for example, from WO 2010/112366 A1. The spur wheel differential gear arrangement presented there discloses the operational capability in a motor vehicle. In this case, each toothed helical sun wheel, planetary wheel and a hollow wheel are supported by a surrounding housing with bearings, so that the parallel sun wheels are each coupled with parallel drive shafts. It is provided in this publication that frictional surfaces are disposed between the parallel sun wheels and/or between the sun wheels and the surrounding housing.
However, these known planetary gears have the disadvantage that they require a lot of axial space. It is the objective of the present invention to remedy this situation and to create a space-saving, especially axial space-saving improvement, which is both long-lasting and is at least cost-neutral or in a position in the optimal case even to reduce costs. The previous bearings are usually not stable enough.